


Wannabe Physics Nerd

by intelcore



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, an ode to physics I guess, this is almost crack fic. One degree removed from crack.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25022386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intelcore/pseuds/intelcore
Summary: “Alright,” Jason relents. “I could use the extra help, actually. I haven’t done school before.”“Oh?” Mark frowns. “What did you do then? Homeschool?”Ah. Jason’s slipped up. He can’t very well say raised by wolves or joined a private army. “My stepmom kind of...introduced me to a commune in the Bay Area.”Mark looks legitimately happy for him. “That’s nice!”Jason stares at his teacher, opts for Physics for all the wrong reasons and misses Leo. That’s it.
Relationships: Jason Grace/Leo Valdez (Implied)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	Wannabe Physics Nerd

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday Jason!!! I don’t know how to write you and I haven’t read your internal narration in years but I still love you so here you go. Let’s have a thousand words about nothing but you...doing physics? Missing Leo? Making an awkward new friend? 
> 
> I know next to nothing about American high schools. Just saying.

Physics takes some work to get the hang of, but in the end Jason thinks it’s worth it. Sure, the numericals require more math than Jason had been initially ready for, and the formulas are a pain in the ass to memorise, but it’s fun to learn the mechanisms behind aerodynamics, how electricity works and generally go through the textbook with full knowledge that these laws of Physics don’t all apply to him. Like Jason’s ever had to care about something like _gravity_.

It also helps him take his mind off things. Off everything. Physics is at times mind-numbingly tedious work and at other times it is one of the most fascinating subjects he’s learning, but either way it always manages to occupy enough brain space that Jason doesn’t have to think about the painful stuff.

But some days, the painful stuff creeps in anyway. It’s random and doesn’t really follow a pattern, which makes it all the more awful. Jason can go through a unit of Greco-Roman History without batting an eyelid, but the way the lacrosse captain handles his team reminds him achingly of Reyna. He can think about Piper without a sinking feeling in his stomach, and without replaying her breakup speech in his mind, but in one of the Geography presentations a picture of the Grand Canyon comes up and his stomach lurches, the muscle memory of him leaping over the railing to catch her without knowing he could fly.

He can replay every moment leading up to the final showdown with Gaea, recall every last word he shared with Leo before the goodbye with a detached analysis of _what went wrong and when_ , but the Physics teacher whips out a diagram of a flying vessel to explain drag and the benefits of streamlining— it’s a diagram of a _plane_ , not an enormous Greek trireme, but he still feels a sharp twinge of grief at the spark of excitement in his teacher’s eyes. He can imagine Leo explaining some new creation with the same fervour, the same mad genius glint in his eyes.

The words of tiny holographic Leo plays in Jason’s mind anytime he’s in the Physics class.

“Dude,” somebody’s disembodied voice floats next to his ear, and Jason snaps back into his senses. He’s gripping his pencil too hard and the wood is starting to crack. Mark, his lab partner, is fiddling with a vernier caliper and seems to be not getting anywhere with it.

“A little help?” Mark says. “You zoned out for a moment there.”

“Uh,” Jason says intelligently. “Oh. Yeah, I’m sorry, I just…” He trails off. Mark has achieved some success with the caliper and lets out a small “yes!” as the slide finally comes unstuck. It’s a lot of brouhaha for essentially nothing so Jason stares.

Mark jots down something on his pad of paper. “You know,” he says, not looking up as he scribbled furiously. “I’ve been wondering this for a while now, but didn’t think it was my place to ask—what’s up with you staring at Professor Carlos all the time?”

Jason continues staring. Mark finally looks up and his ears redden. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it! It’s just that you space out every time you’re in Physics class, and I thought it’s because you really don’t get the subject—“

“I don’t,” Jason clarifies. Despite all the waxing of poetry he’s done about the subject to psyche himself up to study it, he’s _really_ bad at it. It’s probably linked to how he’s never gone to school before this. 

“I know! But it’s not a _blank_ look,” Mark says. “It’s almost like you’re…” Mark shuts up. “You know, forget about it. Help me with the readings.”

If Jason was a little bit more curious, he might have prodded further. As it is, he takes the executive decision to leave it alone. He begins to readjust the vernier scale—

“Do you like him?” Mark asks, half laughingly. He pushes his glasses up his nose nervously. “Like, uh, you know. What do people say...hots for the teacher?”

Jason decides he’s curious enough for _this_. “What?”

“Terrible phrasing,” Mark hurries to clarify. “I just meant because you kept staring at him during classes, and you trip over yourself to get the assignments done even if you hate it, and you clearly don’t want to drop the class even though you, no offense, suck at it way too supremely.”

“No!” Jason says. “I just…”

He certainly doesn’t... _have the hots_ for Professor Carlson (UGH. Also _uh?_ ) He certainly can’t think of anything that would give Mark this absurd idea.

“Okay, you know what? I’m really sorry. That was presumptuous. And like, weird. Inappropriate. Let’s get back to our work.” Mark jumps back to his scribbling. 

“I…” Jason starts. He stops. Starts again. “I...don’t suck _that_ bad at Physics.”

Mark bites his lip. “I’m sorry about that too.”

“And I don’t _hate_ it either.”

“Okay. Like I said. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t have the hots for Professor Carlson. Definitely not.”

Mark nods apologetically. “Okay. You just have a very intense stare, I guess.”

“Maybe,” Jason allows. 

They work in silence for a bit. Mark looks embarrassed but neither of them say anything else. Once they tabulate the readings only then do they look up.

“My friend was really good at Physics,” Jason offers at last.

Mark nods. “Oh.”

“He was a prodigy. Physics and maths—mechanics especially. He was fascinated by it all. I didn’t really get it, but I’m trying to.”

“That’s sweet,” Mark says, unsure but kind. He doesn’t prod about how or where his friend is now, which is good. Jason didn’t think he was ready for that. Even with the holographic scroll, the loss and grief of the past month had been too big to name. Even with Piper. It would be unthinkable with _Mark_. “He, uh, inspired you or something?”

“Not really in the Physics department.” When it came to other things? Yeah. “But...it sounds stupid, really, but I felt like it was a way to be closer to him? A way to understand him better?”

And secretly, so naively, to understand the astrolabe better. To understand Harley’s beacon and how it was supposed to work. To learn enough to build a wholeass Greek trireme.

Jason had realised very quickly that there was nothing remotely relevant to any of this in tenth grade Physics. He was a stupid son of Jupiter, not Hephaestus. He could fly around and blast things with lightning, not build. He just learnt laws and theorems. Did some sums about weight and force and pressure. It all just made him miss Leo more. 

But he’d stuck it out anyway. Because that was what he did. Because there wasn’t anything else to fill his time. Because sometimes people got interested in this stuff and for a moment their excited chatter reminded him of Leo. The neet diagrams on the blackboard. Models of flying vessels. The way his teacher used his hands to get his point across. Sometimes, it just helped him get his mind off things.

“And this friend of yours...is around?” Mark asks, hesitantly.

“Yeah. He’s around.” Best way to describe it.

“You guys must have been close,” Mark says, “if you were willing to suck it up through Physics class.”

“I told you. I find it _fine_.”

“You’re failing,” Mark says sympathetically. “Look, I’m not a genius like your friend or anything, but I at least took this class because I like it. Let me tutor you. If you insist on suffering through...Physics class for sentimental reasons, let’s see that you don’t fail out of it at least?”

Jason can’t help but glare at him. Mark shakes his head like your funeral, bro. 

“Alright,” Jason relents. “I could use the extra help, actually. I haven’t done school before.”

“Oh?” Mark frowns. “What did you do then? Homeschool?”

Ah. Jason’s slipped up. He can’t very well say raised by wolves or joined a private army. “My stepmom kind of...introduced me to a commune in the Bay Area.”

Mark looks legitimately happy for him. “That’s nice!”

Sure. Nice was a word.

“She into that kind of stuff?”

“She...has hipster tendencies.”

Mark just nods. “Cool. Anyway, we have a deal? You actually try to pay attention and help me in our lab experiments, and I’ll tutor you in Physics.”

That’s probably an unfair deal since Jason has to do his part anyway, but he shrugs. “Deal.”

“Wow though,” Mark says, packing up. “Taking up a whole new subject because of your friend. You guys must be close.”

Jason tries to smile. “Yeah.”

Mark finishes the last of his clearing up and they return the apparatus back to the lab attendant. They’re the last ones to turn in their work, but Professor Carlson seems unbothered. He usually is. 

“A lot of talking from what I could see.” Professor Carlson smiles. Jason can feel heat rising to his cheeks. “You boys seem to be really interested in your work! I don’t see such dedication usually.”

Mark laughs nervously. Jason feels too mortified to speak.

“We wanted to be accurate,” Mark says.

“Of course. I appreciate accuracy.”

They’d managed to unstick the caliper only in the last twenty minutes. Then they had shittalked Jason’s Physics prowess.

“You know Jason, I really appreciate you,” Carlson says contemplatively, as they are about to leave. “Always attentive. Always looking at me and trying to absorb everything I teach you. Very few students have those priorities nowadays I’m afraid. I’m very much looking forward to your project for the Science Fair!”

Oh, dear _gods_.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember kids: never opt for subjects because your friends like them!
> 
> Jason is USING physics, and not defying anything but shhhh he doesn’t KNOW that. 
> 
> ty for reading my very first attempt at writing Jason!!! 
> 
> I was So desperate for ideas I very tempted to write Brason fic because I don’t remember how Jason interacts with his friends in canon ( and I won’t know until I get there in my reread). But the brick has got a fanon characterisation at this point, so I made Jason get a new acquaintance. Friend if you will.
> 
> (This HC is a weird ass one I made a couple of months ago,,,Jason is suffering through physics because it’s the beginning of the school year and apparently by TBM he is a certified nerd?? Idk man but we need conflict. So he sucks here, but he loves Leo and doesn’t know how to show it so he sits and memorises Newton’s laws. Ways to support and relate to your MIA nerd bf)


End file.
